Brookings 'Green Economy' report undercounts Portland jobs

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Solar manufacturing jobs were underrepresented in a widely publicized report from the Brookings Institution

A highly publicized report released last week from the Brookings Institution and Batelle reported significantly fewer Portland jobs in the renewable energy sector than exist on the ground.

While Oregon was lauded in the "Sizing the Green Economy" report for having the second-highest share of what the researchers deemed 'clean economy' jobs for its population size, the state's reputation as a hot spot for solar manufacturing wasn't given a mention.

Digging into the data, it turns out that the report counted just 39 solar jobs in the Portland metro region for 2010.

An accounting from Multnomah County puts solar industry employment in the Portland metro area — Oregon side of the river only — at 1,364.

At that level, Portland would have ranked in the top five metro areas for solar jobs in the report, instead of languishing at No. 38, according to the Brookings data.

Pam Neal, senior project coordinator for the Portland Development Commission, said the agency is collecting job data and is in touch with the report's authors.

"We're going to continue to look into it and work with the employment department to make sure these jobs are accounted for," Neal said.

The data collected by the report researchers for wind industry jobs also appears off, with 317 Portland-area jobs counted.

"Iberdrola and Vestas alone have more jobs than they accounted for," Neal said. "And there are a lot more wind-energy companies in the Portland area that aren't even counted."

Neal said that she's been in touch with the report researchers and that they expressed a willingness to correct their findings.

It's important that they do, suggests Ron Pernick of Portland-based Clean Edge.

"What Brookings and Batelle are trying to do is extremely laudable," said Pernick, who releases an annual Clean Energy Leadership Index that tracks similar data. "If you can't accurately track this market then you can't gauge successes. But the accounting has to be accurate."

Pernick adds that these green job discrepancies — an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune also raises questions about the Brookings data — highlight the need for proper job coding on a national level that would standardize the way "green" jobs are tracked.

"That's what really needs to happen," Pernick said.

The Brookings-Batelle study was widely written about for its ranking of "clean economy" hot spots.

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